See How Scientists Identified Our New Human Ancestor

September 10, 2015 -
Scientists from all over the world came together to analyze the bones belonging
to Homo naledi, a human ancestor newly discovered in
South Africa. Led by paleoanthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence
Lee Berger, this team of experts compared the morphology of the naledi fossils with
other early hominins to learn more about the new members and how they
might fit within the human family.

LEE BERGER, PALEOANTHROPOLOGIST AND NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
EXPLORER-IN-RESIDENCE:We now know what we got.
We’ve got a new member of the genus Homo,
a species that we’re going to call Homo
naledi.

It’s Day 29 of a 30-day workshop that is entirely designed
to describe and study the first generation of papers on the material from the
Rising Star which I brought together around 40 to 45 people at any one time
with about 30 to 32 early-career scientists.
They brought an entirely unique skillset as well as differences in
opinion from different backgrounds and training so that we were sure that we
were looking at these fossils to see whether we could efficiently go through
this material in a way no one has ever done before.

SCIENTIST ON-CAMERA: So this is the most complete piece of
the pelvis that we have. There’s not a
whole lot there but there are actually some very important morphologies
preserved on this piece.

WILLIAM HARCOURT-SMITH, LEHMAN COLLEGE-CUNY, NEW YORK, NEW
YORK, UNITED STATES: All these bones were found together. They all come from the same individual. They all come from the same side. But we don’t obviously want to glue the
original so we’re doing it with 3D print out.

LEE BERGER, PALEOANTHROPOLOGIST AND NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
EXPLORER-IN-RESIDENCE:
Anyone who walked into that room would feel the intellectual
and scientific buzz that was happening.
You can actually feel the room vibrating with it. It is an amazing experience. I’ve learned tons.

SCOTT WILLIAMS, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK, NEW YORK,
UNITED STATES:
So, the axial skeleton really took a beating, uh, in
preservation so we got lots of little pieces .
So, in overall size if we take a look at our vertebrae, it’s very, very
tiny. If we compare it to the smallest
known australopithecus vertebrae of a
similar level—that belonging to Lucy from Australopithecus
afarensis—you can see that our vertebrae is actually a fair amount smaller
than that of Lucy.

LAUREN SCHROEDER, UNIVERSITY OF CAPETOWN, CAPETOWN, SOUTH
AFRICA:
In terms of the cranial team, I didn’t know anyone. And we all, six ladies [laughs] all
early-career scientists, just got together and we just started working. Two of
us went off and did the metrics stuff.
Two of us went off and did non-metrics.
And the other two did the writing. So, it worked really, really, really
well.

DAVORKA RADOVCIC, NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM OF CROATIA, ZAGREB,
CROATIA :Every piece of body has kind of, like, its own story. And now you have to combine all of it and
come to a kind of solution for the whole sample.

TRENTON HOLLIDAY, TULANE UNIVERSITY, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA,
UNITED STATES:We work in a very contentious field, so I had some fears
that there might be some things that were controversial that people wouldn’t
want to say, that you’re going to have infighting among the various
groups. But it hasn’t been that way at
all. I would say it has been a very
positive experience.

LAUREN SCHROEDER, UNIVERSITY OF CAPETOWN, CAPETOWN, SOUTH
AFRICA: Just the sheer magnitude of material is awesome. And, yeah, it’s good to be South African and
be associated with the South African material.

WORKSHOP TEAM MEMBER 1 ON-CAMERA: The teeth in the maxilla are offset
posteriorly.

WORKSHOP TEAM MEMBER2 ON-CAMERA: Right.

WORKSHOP TEAM MEMBER 1 ON-CAMERA: So the maxillary M3 can’t touch the
mandibular M2.

WORKSHOP TEAM MEMBER 2 ON-CAMERA: Right.

LEE BERGER, PALEOANTHROPOLOGIST AND NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
EXPLORER-IN-RESIDENCE:All these different experts are able to bounce questions in
a moment off of each other.
Cross-pollination. Scientific
ideas. You make less mistakes that way.

I’ll be you that we spent more in this month in person hours
working on this material than most teams spend in years and years and years
working on their material. I learned
that the people who go into paleoanthropology and study it doing for love and
passion. When you let them loose on
these fossils, they create extraordinary things because they are passionate
about it.

See How Scientists Identified Our New Human Ancestor

September 10, 2015 -
Scientists from all over the world came together to analyze the bones belonging
to Homo naledi, a human ancestor newly discovered in
South Africa. Led by paleoanthropologist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence
Lee Berger, this team of experts compared the morphology of the naledi fossils with
other early hominins to learn more about the new members and how they
might fit within the human family.